


opening doors

by wisteria (orphan_account)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, kingdom au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/wisteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But he was so pressed and clean when he was destined to be dirty, so sweet and caring when he was meant to be mean, that no one could take it that he was actually human. They thought he was something in disguise, some demon that pirouetted among the human populace. So they kept him low, they kept him hated, even though most knew by now that demons don't have feelings like him, they don't speak with tones like him, they don't display that they deserve better like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	opening doors

**Author's Note:**

> This is a drabble that I wrote quite a bit ago, but it pains me that I haven't posted any Hetalia on my account yet. I figured posting it would bring no harm.

There was a certain way he held himself in front of the royal court, as if he deserved to be there; so pressed and clean, despite the dirt that engulfed his family, so sweet and caring, despite the hate he received. He was, and always would be, nothing that they ever thought him to be, nothing he was supposed to be. Always better, always worse, but never expected.

He was a knight of the lowest caliber; he only worked at the break of dawn, when the most fiends would dance, when the most would try to infiltrate the castle walls. He may have been at the lowest rung, but he did the most work, and he was the best the kingdom had seen.

But he was so pressed and clean when he was destined to be dirty, so sweet and caring when he was meant to be mean, that no one could take it that he was actually human. They thought he was something in disguise, some demon that pirouetted among the human populace. So they kept him low, they kept him hated, even though most knew by now that demons don't have feelings like him, they don't speak with tones like him, they don't display that they deserve better like him.

 

He had taken up fighting for kindness.

 

The prince, the one to take the crown, had ignored much of his plights. Or so the public thought; they did not think of the prince much, and to be fair, he did not think of them much, either. He had thick brows that were always creased and sandy hair that neither matched his father's or mother's, his eyes were green like the grasses but most of the time they were gray, like the skin of his face when in danger, or the stones that blocked off the castle from the public. He was nearly always hidden away, and only appeared in the land's finest imported silks.

Sometimes, the servants would catch glimpses of him in normal attire, without jewels dangling from his neck and his ears and his head.

Sometimes, he would sit and stare out of the window with his fingers threaded together, and his eyes would be lulled but open; it looked as if he was sad, and a bit dead, or maybe just depressed. Other times, he would lay in his bed with his hands clasped and played over his stomach, as if he was just about to be set in a fresh coffin. Ever since the Queen died, he was in some sort of trance, and no longer partook in many regular activities. He stopped painting and drawing, he stopped everything he used to do except for read. He would read in the early morning, when the sun still fret to shine, when he could hear the one knight fight off every beast that dare step foot.

There were rare times when he wrote, when he would sit and move his pale hand across the paper; that was always when he heard the bellows of the soldier, when he had been hurt; he would always write when the knight was incapacitated.

 

He wrote of the knight, of the fights he could only hear; of the way he showed up so clean, so proper, and so sweetly; of the way he would still look upon the king with fondness, as if the king was not corrupt or cruel or using him as a slave; of his soft blue eyes, and accent that fared from far off, and his tall build, and stray tuft of hair.

And there was one time when Prince Arthur Kirkland delivered one of the stories right to his doorstep, in the early dawn, when the house was unoccupied; it was long after the fight, it was years after, and it detailed of the last fight he heard him do. The knight had not fought for a long time, as he had been banished from the royal fleet, set to go after fighting with the king for too long. It was not even about himself, but the knights who fought above him with no recognition.

Alfred, the knight, still left his home in the crack of light, he still fought them, but he did so silently. He was far too loyal than what was good for him.

 

So the prince snuck out, with ease, and slipped it under his door. He also let his fingers trace the cold wood of the door, and was not the least bit alarmed when it creaked open; he then slipped himself through, and was but appalled by the terrible condition it was in. It was grungy and disgusting but it was so homely that Arthur choked on his breath. He didn't know what he was doing anymore, so far from his home, but so at home here, in the cottage. He stepped over to the bed, the old, small, tiny bed, tucked full of straw, and he sat. And then he wept, wept for the man who fought for the kingdom, and he wept for his father, whom he hated so; he wept for himself, for what he had become in the years since his mother's passing, and he wept and he wept and he wept for it all.

 

"Prince Arthur?" It was low but sweet and so concerned, but Arthur did not dare look up, for fear of it not being who he thought; he kept his face buried in his hands, now salty from tears.

He heard footsteps creak on the floor, and then the weight beside him on the bed, and then he smelled blood; whether it was human or beast he could not tell, and it may as well had been both. Soon, he felt arms wrapping themselves around him, and then one was under his legs, and he was being carried, out from the home. There was a lull when Alfred spotted the royal paper in the doorway, and Arthur could feel himself being dipped as he picked it up.

It was, perhaps, the most heart stopping moment in the prince's life.

He felt himself being pulled closer, tighter, an embrace; then he could feel the release of air from a whispered secret. "It was always for you, you know." 


End file.
